Alerts

Portland Campus - Bedford Street construction notice

Due to City of Portland construction, please note that all summer, Bedford Street on the Portland Campus will be restricted to one lane, one-way traffic going from Brighton Avenue down to Forest Avenue. Parking lots/garage will still be accessible. Read more details here.

USM Distinguished Professor of Art Rose Marasco of Portland has received the second annual University of Southern Maine Provost’s Research Fellowship for the 2011-2012 academic year. The Fellowship will allow Marasco to continue her photography project, “New Work: New York.” For the project, Marasco will use a pinhole camera and 4x5 color film to capture the architecture and urban environment of Manhattan.

A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and a small aperture, requiring lengthy exposures. These long exposures will show the bustling people in Manhattan streets as transitory while the constructed environment will be in focus. She conceived the project while demonstrating the process of making a pinhole image for her students.

Marasco has received high praise from Julia Van Haaften, former curator of the New York Public Library Photography Collection, and Robert Riley, an independent media curator formerly with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her choices of using a pinhole camera with color film is unique. The outcome of this Fellowship will be exhibitions in both New York City and USM’s Art Gallery in Gorham.

Marasco has held visiting artist, jury, and curator positions and has exhibited throughout the United States, Latvia, and France.

The USM Provost’s Research Fellowship is designed to allow the recipient, who must be a tenured professor, the opportunity to spend time on activities related to research, creative work and scholarly attainment. Chosen through a competitive process, Research Fellows are given release time from teaching one class for two semesters, using the time to proceed with a research project.